Well folks the weeks around the Crash of 2013 have been filled with anxiety, brainstorming, flurried keyboard activity, messages, emails and Google searches. Not to mention much gnashing of teeth.
To tell the truth, a couple of weeks before KTRT disappeared, I had a frightening crash in the seCRet lOCation. I had a hard drive crash and I hadn’t backed up this summers photos… I had gotten sloppy in my computer backups. Now it seemed I had a major loss.
Ever lose photos? It sucks. All the prints and slides of my younger and wilder days disappeared in a burglary years ago. At that time I entertained thoughts of being a photographer. I took pics of everything and I always had a 35mm camera with me. It was a hard loss. This dampened my desire to even shoot photos. Literally my younger history was erased, just gone. Like Stalin had ordered it so.
Digital loss sucks worse. It’s so easy to prevent. Have you looked at the prices of hard drives lately? Computer memory is cheap and back ups can be done effortlessly, over night! My bad.
After some frantic research and diagnostic work I had a solution. A week and a half waiting for parts and I rescued my precious photos. Meanwhile, I cleaned up my computer and did the requisite restoration of my computer system. Loading up 130+ dvd’s of backed up music collection was daunting. So I waited to rescue my music library as a complete file rather than reload all 130+ dvd’s. It took over night for the music library to restore itself.
Lesson here (again!), keep up with the maintenance, it’s so easy.

Then K Root crashed the first Friday that I had the seCRet lOCation back together… and silence rested over the land called Methow. Not even a 60 cycle hum to keep us company.
The music is back on in the Methow Valley. Ads are playing again and we here at K Root finally feel like we’ve got breathing space again. But the silence brought on by the Crash of ’13 was deafening. Did it get your attention too? Well hold on to that memory.
The little station that Dov engineered together got us this far. The remarkable thing is, Dov did this on a shoe string. We can’t retie that shoe string any more. Now it’s time for us to pony up. We need computers, studio equipment, software… expensive software, rent money for a decent studio… the list goes on and on. K Root needs cash. And honestly there just isn’t much of an advertising base here. It’s a small valley.
You want to know how easy it is to give cash to K Root? We have a long time listener/supporter, who’s has given K Root ten bucks a month through the bank since 2008. She just has the bank do it. Seriously. Easy. You can also donate here. Or get a Kool KTRT Kard.
Just so we’re clear, this is not tax deductible.
Twenty years ago there was not much in the way of radio in the Methow. I remember, it was radio wasteland here. Then came the, now infamous, KVLR, and that episode again proved how easy it is to lose something so cool. Today, we have K Root. And The Root, quite literally runs on fumes. All the DJ’s are volunteers. All sustain their own music collection. Our computers are a mash up of Macs and Linux machines. The studio is a small little room above a pottery studio in an out building. And for all the funk and quirks that this little station may have, I don’t want to lose it.

The memory of a radio free Methow is still in my mind. K Root is too cool to lose.